Compare the architecture of Brunelleschi and Alberti with special reference to their classical sources.
The classical inspirations for the work of Filippo Brunelleschi and of Leon Battista Alberti bear striking similarities. Both were to spend time in Rome, amongst the ruins of that grandest of the capitals of antiquity, at the height of the architectural rediscovery of the early quattrocento. Whilst Brunelleschi can be credited, along with his long-time compatriot Donatello, of being the first to return ad fontes for his architectural inspiration with visits to the Nymphaeum and of course the awe inspiring pantheon, both of which provided inspiration for a return to the rounded arch and, more importantly, the dome. It was this earliest of…show more content… It was Brunelleschi who first forced the departure from the high gothic tradition, undoubtedly beautiful yet still overbearing spiritual, seeking to force the viewer into faith by its awesome power. The creations of Brunelleschi can be viewed as light and serene, juxtaposed against the oppressive intricacy of only a generation before, supremely lucid, rational and serene, on account of their ability to exploit the newfound geometric relationships. The soaring spaces of a Gothic cathedral were intended to awe and mystify the viewer with the transcendent beauty of the sacred. The Renaissance church, in contrast, wanted to communicate that a path to the sacred could be based in mathematics, evident in his church designs, coming very close to attaining the golden ratio. It is the dome of Florence Cathedral that belies Brunelleschi’s supreme skill as an engineer, designing his own machinery and creating models on a large scale, to solve the problem of spanning the octagon that had eluded so many others. It is compromise that one sees in the final product, between a desire for classical awe, and the late gothic functionality of spanning an unsupported 138 foot drum. In this respect Brunelleschi was even more constrained by his surroundings than Alberti, and as a consequence his achievement is the greater. Brunelleschi alone was the driving force in the beginning of the movement, with his foundling hospital being the first to exhibit the geometrical relationship between the hemisphere and the square that would dominate the architectural world for centuries. With his experiments in